RESOURCES

The mission and vision of PNAP is rooted in a feminist abolitionist lens. On this page you will find a selection of readings recommended and/or written by PNAP faculty, as well as a small selection of our comrades in this work—prison education organizations from across the country and projects, groups, and organizations that embody the abolitionist spirit. If you are purchasing books, consider doing so from a local business like the Seminary Co-Op, Women and Children First, or Semicolon in Chicago. * = PNAP author(s)

Recommended Reading 

  • Are Prisons Obsolete? and Abolition Democracy by Angela Davis
  • Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation by Beth Richie*
  • Arts of the Possible by Adrienne Rich 
  • Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex by Eric Stanley and Nat Smith
  • The Color of Violence by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (eds.)
  • The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
  • For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State by Erica Meiners*
  • Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex by Julia Sudbury (ed.)
  • Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
  • Imagine the Angels of Bread by Martín Espada
  • Kindred by Octavia Butler
  • The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences Working Toward Freedom by Alice Kim, Erica Meiners, Audrey Petty, Jill Petty, Beth Richie, and Sarah Ross (eds.)*
  • My Midnight Years: Surviving Jon Burge’s Police Torture Ring and Death Row by Ronald Kitchen
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
  • The New Abolitionists: (Neo)slave Narratives And Contemporary Prison Writings by Joy James (ed.)
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
  • Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
  • Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
  • Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law
  • Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson by George Jackson
  • Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System by Risa Puleo (ed.)
  • When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story in the Movement for Prison Abolition by Jamie Bissonette

Aligned Projects

  • Alabama Prison Arts and Education Program
  • Assata’s Daughters
  • Bard Prison Initiative
  • Bedford Hills College Program
  • Black Prisoners Caucus T.E.A.C.H.
  • BYP100 
  • Carceral Geographies
  • Chicago Torture Justice Memorials
  • Critical Resistance
  • Education Justice Project 
  • Free Write Arts & Literacy
  • Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison
  • I Am Kid Culture: Started by former PNAP student Patrick Pursley while he was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated at Stateville.
  • INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
  • John Howard Association
  • Justice Mapping
  • Justice Policy Institute
  • Liberation Library
  • Lifted Voices
  • Love + Protect
  • Million Dollar Blocks
  • Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration
  • Parole Illinois
  • Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago
  • Prison Creative Arts Project 
  • The Prison Policy Initiative
  • Prison University Project at San Quentin
  • Project NIA
  • Stateville Speaks
  • UNC-Chapel Hill Correctional Education Program